“Sometimes you need that soft place to fall. That’s your family, your faith. The stuff that doesn’t change when everything else does.”
In The Language of Sycamores, Karen has been going through the motions for years. She is climbing the ladder at her tech firm while her husband is an airline pilot. They rarely see each other and don’t connect much when they do. They’ve spent the last eight years avoiding talking about a miscarriage and Karen’s cancer scare. However, when Karen gets fired from her job and her sister calls to invite her to the family farm for a weekend, she takes a chance to do something differently not knowing that she is sending her life in an entirely different direction.
The Language of Sycamores is the third book in the Tending Roses series by Lisa Wingate. I enjoyed reading Tending Roses and Good Hope Road and plan to read the rest of the series. However, I first found Wingate by reading Before We Were Yours, which is a haunting historical fiction book about the Georgia Tann adoption scandal in Tennessee. (I highly recommend it!)
As Karen slowly opens up to her family and husband again, she also meets a little girl who lives nearby but spends a lot of time at the farm – Dell. Karen feels a connection with the girl that is reinforced by their shared musical talents. When a kids’ camp comes into town, Karen helps Dell get into the camp but finds herself helping at the camp as well. The fulfillment she finds helping the kids beats anything she did at the tech company.
The Language of Sycamores was a very easy read and I found the story very uplifting. It’s a story of second chances and finding a truly good perspective about life. I would recommend to anyone looking for a good fiction read.
Have you had a change in perspective about where your life was going? Share in the comments below!